18 Book Reviews submitted by our Members...sorted by voted most helpful

I live in the Philadelphia area and remember very clearly when this happened. It's so hard to believe that something this horrific can actually happen in my little corner of the globe. I thought this book was well written and it was hard to put down.

Good read for the most part. At first couldn't put it down. Dragged a little at the end with the court case. Very disturbing but if you don't like true crime/murder stories then i don't think you would read this in the first place.

This is certainly not the best written true crime book I've ever read. Shocking? Yes. Horrible? Certainly. It starts with a lot of promise, but gets a bit lost in the middle. The author makes time jumps seemingly without relevance, rather than as an attempt to explain the circumstances.

3520 North Marshall Street in Philadelphia is a house tainted with the stench of burning flesh. What police found there was an incredible nightmare made real. Four young women had been held captive--some for four months--half-naked and chained. They had been tortured, starved, and repeatedly raped. But more grotesque discoveries lay in the kitchen: human limbs frozen, a torso burned to cinders, an empty pot suspiciously scorched....

This is not a story for the faint-hearted. It is a shocking true account of the self-proclaimed minister with a long history of mental illness, whose bizarre plan to create his own "baby factory" preyed upon the susceptible and the retarded. It is a macabre web spun around the twin spectors of money and religion, tangled with courtroom drama and lawyers' tactics, sure to send a chill into your very soul.

The first part oft he book, like any book about a crazy person, is about Gary Heidnik himself. The middle section of the book contains details and scenarios about the women Heidnik kidnapped, abused and murdered. The book then goes into nearly a line-by-line retelling of the trial after Gary is caught, which comes across as very dry, unless you like reading about trials.

With the intention of creating a family of his own design, this book gives the gruesome story of one sick-minded individual. In his attempt at controlling the women he had kidnapped, raped, and imprisoned, Gary Heidnik goes too far...he murders two of his captives!